Harvey J Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles M Rice were jointly announced as the winners of the Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2020 by the Nobel Foundation on Monday for their discovery of the Hepatitis C virus.

“This year’s Nobel Prize is awarded to three scientists who have made a decisive contribution to the fight against blood-borne hepatitis, a major global health problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world,” the Nobel Foundation said in a press statement. 

This year’s Nobel season kicked off with the announcement of the winner in the field of health, amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Harvey Alter and Charles Rice both belong to the US and Michael Houghton is from United Kingdom.

The winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded by the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Over the span of 1901 to 2019, 110 prizes have been rewarded in this field.

The prize-awarding committees were “not in any way influenced by what is happening in the world at the time,” Erling Norrby, the former permanent secretary of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences which awards the science prizes, told AFP.

Even though the pandemic has sent the world in a situation like never before, no prizes were expected to be awarded this year for work directly linked to the new coronavirus, as Nobel prize-winning research usually takes many years to be verified.